by Maura Rose
“No.” Ivan looked appalled at the thought. “No, we have made a promise and we stick to those. And it’s not nonsense to continue our alliance. If it becomes too dangerous for my people—our people—for us to stick with the Mikhailovs, then I will consider calling things off, but there is honor at stake here. No, the question is whether someone else will realize that the Mikhailovs are not as strong and secure in their power as they once were and make a play. And if so, who and how will they strike? We must be prepared.” Ivan took a steadying breath and continued.
“If we can find an enemy and destroy them, it will go a long way toward earning respect in this city and Mikhailov’s trust in our alliance with his family. If there is no one, then there is no one. But if there is someone, then we have done him a huge favor, a favor that he will not forget. It is a win-win situation for us.”
“Unless he finds out we have been snooping,” Pavel pointed out, “and there is no one threatening him. We will look untrustworthy.”
“That is a risk I am willing to take,” Ivan replied firmly. “You met with Natalia Mikhailov once already. I would like for you to meet with her again, if possible. Something similar to before. It will appear to the others as though you are simply continuing to get to know one another. But through her, you can possibly learn much more about the personalities of the people involved while we look at the numbers.”
“Are you thinking it will be an inside job, then?”
“It could be outside, from another family,” Ivan acknowledged. “But we were only able to find the cracks in the wall by looking, and we were only looking because of the alliance. According to most of the world, the Mikhailov family is impenetrable. Why go after them when there are so many other, supposedly weaker, families to attack?”
That made sense. “But Kate must have told you that the meeting did not go well.”
“There were sparks,” Kate said firmly.
“We argued.”
“You should have seen Ivan and me when we first met,” Kate replied, smirking in amusement. She looked over at Ivan. “They definitely wanted to bang.”
“Thanks,” Ivan said dryly. “I really want to know these things about my best friend.”
Pavel couldn’t help but feel a little proud to know that Ivan was so comfortable stating things like that. Affection wasn’t something to be hidden, but in the mafia world, it could be charged with political reasons. To be not just a lieutenant but openly the friend of the leader was a bold statement, and Pavel appreciated Ivan’s loyalty and faith in him.
“There were not sparks,” Pavel insisted. Kate had clearly been right, seeing as he and Natalia had then gone and had mind-blowing sex the next day, but he had a reputation to maintain, dammit.
Kate shrugged as if to say, keep protesting if it makes you feel better. “The point is that I think Natalia would be open to meeting him. And I think that if you could just turn on the charm instead of poking the bear, Pavel, you could get her to open up to you and give us some information.”
“She won’t like that,” Pavel warned. “Natalia’s a proud woman, she won’t like the idea that she’s being pumped for information.”
“It’s better to be prepared than to be caught with our pants down,” Ivan said. “We’re allying ourselves with this family. If they go down, then it could very well be that we go down with them. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s for her own good as well as ours.”
Pavel nodded, pretending to agree. But no matter what Ivan said, he was going to tell Natalia the truth. He would have to hope that she trusted him about Ivan and Kate finding suspicious information. Kate and Ivan had been the ones who’d investigated Kate’s family when there was a traitor in their midst, and if they said they found something about the Mikhailov family being in a weak position then Pavel was inclined to believe them, and not just out of simple loyalty.
He only hoped that this wouldn’t backfire on him.
Chapter Ten
Natalia couldn’t believe it when she got a message from Pavel.
She was out on her morning jog when another man running with his dog ran into her. He apologized, saying he wasn’t looking where he was going, but when she took her clothes off to hop in the shower she found a note in her jacket pocket.
Meet in the park, same place as before. Urgent.
~ Pavel
She knew that this could be a trap. Pavel could have faked the whole thing so that he could now get her alone and kidnap her and hold her for ransom. Or this could be someone else who’d seen her and Pavel and was now trying to get her alone for kidnapping or another reason. The possibilities for danger felt endless. Especially now that her father had confided in her the precarious position the family was in.
But something deep in her gut told her to trust this. Bratva families—hell, all crime families—did have members who were grifters, trained to lie and manipulate and get in good with marks. But although used to lying, most bratva men weren’t actually good actors, and Pavel hadn’t been slick enough for a grifter. He would’ve charmed her on their first meeting if he was, and not been stubborn. And she hadn’t sensed any lie in the personal things he’d told her when they were together last time.
And nobody could fake the way he’d behaved when he’d taken her back to his apartment. The way he’d touched her, his mouth on her skin, the desperate way he’d fucked her.
He’d genuinely wanted her, and he’d genuinely enjoyed taking care of her. She couldn’t forget that even if she’d wanted to, and she wasn’t sure that she did.
There wasn’t a time on the note, but it did say urgent, so Natalie showered and dressed quickly and then headed out, telling her sister Lana to tell Irena that she’d gone to the art museum.
“You should have a bodyguard!” Lana called after her.
“I’ll be fine, it’s just down the street!” Natalia called back. Who cared about the youngest daughter, anyway? Irena was the one who should have two bodyguards on her at all times, for crying out loud.
She didn’t take her cell phone, either, just in case. Father seemed to think that his daughters didn’t know that he’d put tracking devices on their phones way back when they were young adults and he’d first allowed them to have phones in the first place, but Natalia had always been aware. No way was she letting anyone track her and link her to Pavel and get them both in trouble.
Hopefully, Irena wouldn’t try to call her on it.
Sure enough, when she got to the park bench, Pavel was sitting there. He was wearing just a t-shirt and jeans, probably trying to look casual to anyone glancing at him. Natalia could see the tightness in his shoulders and the way his legs, splayed on the bench, weren’t in a casual pose but subtly deterring anyone else from sitting on the bench—and would spring him to his feet in the classic fighting position if someone came swinging at him.
Natalia waved when she saw him, like they were just friends meeting up. Pavel moved over so that she could sit next to him.
“Everything all right?” she asked, her voice low but keeping her face casual, smiling like she was saying hello.
Pavel dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in, kissing her cheek like they were greeting each other. “We have reason to believe your family’s in a weak position. I was sent to try and get information from you about it.”
Oh, fuck. If the Sokolovs could figure out that her family was struggling, then others could, as well. Pavel noticed her going stiff in concern and squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “Ivan and Kate are the best. They met when investigating her family. They don’t think anyone else has found out what we did.”
“My father summoned me yesterday to tell me how important it was that our marriage go through properly,” she admitted. “He told me we needed allies to strengthen ourselves, especially since your family is so close with the old country. We’ve… fallen by the wayside, I think.”
“Getting strong alliances will get rid of any weaknesses your family might have i
n its business affairs,” Pavel said, apparently thinking out loud. “It’s why he agreed to marry you off so quickly, why all your sisters are engaged.”
Natalia nodded. “Irena’s marriage is first, but Lana’s is already scheduled. Vasilisa announced her engagement a bit ago, although it isn’t scheduled, and Anastasia’s just announced hers. Mine with yours will be announced at Irena’s wedding and I can assume the dates of the others will be, as well.”
“Five alliances, with powerful or up-and-coming families,” Pavel murmured. “And with Kate’s family as well, they’re loyal to the Sokolovs. It would be enough to keep him strong just through assisting them and being a connection.”
“No wonder he was so desperate for us all to get married, right?” Natalia tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow, ricocheting through the emptiness in her chest. “I thought it was just he wanted us to be ‘adults’ and that’s his idea of what being an adult is for a woman in the bratva. Or something stupid like that. Turns out he just wanted to use us to secure the strength of the family.”
“We all serve the family,” Pavel pointed out.
Natalia shrugged. “But there’s serving the family and doing your duty, and there’s… setting yourself up for a life of being unhappy with someone that you never met until you married them. There’s being treated like a commodity.”
She didn’t realize why Pavel was leaning in until he was pressing his lips to hers, firm and insistent but not frenzied, not in the passionate way he’d kissed her in bed yesterday. It was slower, like he was kissing her just to kiss her.
“If there’s one thing you’re not, Natalia Mikhailova,” he noted, pulling away just enough so that she could see his eyes, “it’s a passive object.”
Natalia felt her chest warming and she smiled, resisting the urge to reach up and touch her lips where he’d kissed her, or to reach up and caress his cheek.
“You’ve certainly given me enough trouble to convince me of that,” Pavel continued, smiling at her.
Natalia laughed, and it felt a little more real this time. A little more solid.
“That’s why Ivan sent me to you,” Pavel went on. “You’ll know the more personal side of things. Ivan and Kate can look at the figures, but the paper can only tell so much. Do you know of anyone in your father’s employ, anyone in the family, any lieutenants who might want to take advantage of this to make a power grab? Is there any dissention in the ranks?”
Natalia thought back over the past few weeks. Had she noticed anyone behaving differently? Had she seen anyone acting out, behaving in a way that he shouldn’t? Doing or not doing things?
But she hadn’t. Of course, there was the possibility that someone was doing something in such secrecy that nobody had noticed. She wasn’t exactly privy to her father’s every plan. “It would be better if you asked Irena.”
“Irena wouldn’t talk to us,” Pavel replied.
Natalia sighed. She knew that. She knew it like water was wet. Irena was loyal to Father and to Father’s plans. “I don’t know of anyone in our family who could betray us. Everyone is loyal to Father. It’s how it is in the old families.”
“Kate’s family thought everyone was loyal. Ivan’s father thought everyone was loyal.”
“We all know the story about old man Sokolov,” Natalia replied. “We know he was crazy, bloodthirsty, he treated everyone like shit. Ivan’s brother was right to get rid of him.”
A muscle in Pavel’s jaw jumped and his eyes were unreadable. “I cannot say that… that I don’t agree with you. Things are much better now that Ivan is in charge.”
“My father isn’t like that, though.”
“Someone else might disagree with you.”
“Father is stiff, yes. He is old-fashioned. And he has been too proud in refusing help from Russia at times, yes. But he’s not—no one would ever say that he has been too ruthless or too cruel. That is his problem: he is too stuck in the old ways when we pretended to be gentlemen.”
“We are still gentlemen.”
Natalia wanted to laugh but she didn’t think that Pavel would take it the right way. “You’re a gentleman.”
Pavel looked away and she could have sworn she saw him blushing just a little. “And you think that your father’s insistence on old ways is what has made your family weak.”
“If I had to guess. I know nothing of this, or at least I didn’t know anything until yesterday. I doubt that anyone else could know it.”
“Your sister is marrying into a Yakuza family.”
“The Saito family, yes.”
“That could be seen as a sign that your father is desperate.”
“Or it could simply be a sign of changing times. That our ethnic lines aren’t as firm as we’d like to think they are. I think that’s a good thing.”
“If it’s true, then it’s a good thing. But we’re not the only ones speculating. The whole underworld is abuzz about this. Maybe someone took it as a sign of weakness or objected to it on principle and started digging and found the cracks in the Mikhailov foundation.”
“Even if someone did, how would we know who they were?”
“You can keep your eyes and ears open,” Pavel pointed out. “You’re closer than we are.”
Natalia thought that over. That worked if someone from the inside wanted to betray Father and take over… but not if someone from the outside did.
“Have your superiors checked to see if they are the only ones who have accessed this information?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re obviously bribing people and hacking into accounts and such from the outside. Father isn’t just handing you the ledger. You’re getting it behind his back, and that means through unsavory channels, right? If you’ve done it, then someone else could do it—and if they have, then there’s a paper trail. Someone else will have been bribed, or someone will have been bribed before. Computers will show history logs. If you can find information, then someone else can do it too, and you can find them.”
Pavel stared at her for a moment, his eyes a little wide. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
Natalia shrugged. “It’s not—I wouldn’t call it a big revelation, or anything.”
Pavel pulled out his phone. “I’m going to text Ivan that idea so that he can get Kate started on it. She’s the best at research.”
Then he reached over and grabbed her hand, pulling a pen out of his pocket and clearly about to write something on her palm.
“Whoa.” Natalia pulled her hand back. “What are you writing?”
“My phone number. You need to be able to contact me if you find anything. I promise, I’ll tell you if we find anything either.”
Natalia kept her hand away when Pavel tried to reach for it again. “And how am I supposed to explain a phone number on my hand when someone sees it?” She pulled up her shirt, exposing her ribs. “Do it here, nobody will see it unless they took my shirt off and nobody will be doing that.”
“Besides me?” Pavel teased.
“If you’re lucky,” Natalia replied.
Pavel slid his hand up her side, his fingertips skimming just underneath her breasts. Natalia sucked in a breath, glaring at him. He winked at her, the bastard, knowing that he was teasing her.
He spread his palm out to stretch the skin taut so that he could write his number on her side. It was, in a way, innocuous. There wasn’t anything particularly sexy about the side of her torso and it was logically the best place to write so no one would see it. But at the same time, having him touching her bare skin at all, the way he splayed his fingers along her side so casually…
Natalia realized that she was holding her breath as he wrote on her skin, releasing it only as he let go of her and pulled back.
At least she wasn’t the only one affected. Pavel was staring at her with dark eyes, like he wanted to dive in and touch her all over.
It was just a phone number, for crying out loud. And yet, somehow, what they’d done felt like
so much more than that. It was a way to directly communicate with each other. A bond they couldn’t so easily sever. And if it was found out that they’d been doing this, acting like Romeo and Juliet or something, their asses were going to get handed to them by both families.
It made it feel like something permanent. Like a bridge had been crossed.
“You call or text, any time,” Pavel told her, putting the pen away. He was still staring at her like he wanted to devour her, even though he’d pulled her shirt down. His hand rested on her knee and Natalia wanted to grab it and drag it higher up her thigh.
Dammit, she wished they had time to actually do something, something more than just this. Touching but not able to do all the things she was thinking of… it was maddening. Especially now that she knew what it felt like to have him inside of her, to have him touching her all over, his mouth at her breasts, her neck…
Thinking about it definitely wasn’t helping.
“What if you need to contact me?” she asked.
“When you get home, text me so I’ll have your number.”
“All right.”
“I’m serious,” Pavel added. He looked so very earnest. It broke her heart a little, actually. She knew who few people, especially men, in her world who dared to wear their emotions on their sleeve the way that Pavel did. In a way it was rather brave. “I don’t know if there’s anything but there could be something. I’d rather have us be prepared than not. And if you’re suspicious of anyone I want you to tell me.”
“You know I can defend myself, right?” She’d been taking self-defense classes since she was a child. All of her sisters had. Boris, head of the bodyguards employed by her father, had trained them all.
“I know, but any one person can be overcome if they’re caught unprepared or at the right moment.” Pavel gestured at himself. “Ask Ivan about the time he got the shit kicked out of him by his brother Viktor. I’m not saying that I don’t think you could handle yourself if the time came, I just—if you’re having to fight for your life, wouldn’t you want to know that backup was on the way?”
